Observations on what’s getting downvoted, with some dissected specimens

A look at the greatest misses of late, and some theorizing.

Happy Sunday everyone. This is a two-part post in which I explore a few of the most downvoted posts from the past week, as well as offer some observations about what kinds of things we're seeing downvoted generally. We remain committed to understanding how the system is working, so that we can make changes to improve it. By and large, we believe that the signal-to-noise ratio has increased, but we also note that some quality posts have not received recognition.

Below are the most downvoted posts from the last week. We won't make a habit of looking at these, and I'm not going to mention the authors' names, or link to them in context. The idea isn't to shame anyone, start a pile on, or anything of the sort. Rather, I thought it would be a good idea to share some insight into why a few comments received the votes they did.

The comments

"This is fantastic news! Who cares about worldwide hunger when we can spend trillions playing with rocks on Mars?!"

There are many reasons this post was downvoted, chief among them that the author has engaged in extreme hyperbole in a rather off-topic manner. As another reader points out later in that same discussion, NASA's budget is nowhere near trillions of dollars, nor is NASA's budget anywhere near enough to address worldwide hunger. Long story short, this is a troll post, and the readers weren't interested. As I'll expand upon in part II below, this post is of the "but I don't even have a TV" archetype.

The next post only rated -115 votes, which is still far beyond the -20 votes needed to collapse a post. But in this instance, the moderators also got involved. The story was "Too little, too late: Blockbuster gives up on trying to beat Netflix." The post in question looks to place the blame for Blockbuster's failure, but does the poster blame Blockbuster's lack of innovation, its customer service, or the difficult transition from being a brick-and-mortar to an Internet service provider? No, this poster decides to engage in some off-topic political trolling:

"Another victim of the Obama economy. If they can survive through inauguration day there are brighter skies ahead."

Unfortunately, another poster decided to take the bait, and once again the moderators got involved. This troll counter-fired,

"Judging by your comment, you must be the spawn of Mitt Romney. It takes intelligence to troll. Ignoramuses on the other hand..."

This post, coming later in the thread, achieved -45 votes. Both posters earned a temporary vacation from posting.

Our review of the new XCOM game certainly brought forth readers eager to downvote substance-free griping, and a few readers eager to provide that griping. The most downvoted post in the thread rated a -50, presumably because it, too, was substance free, with a dash of personal attack.

"Another Ars apologist review. This game is stream-lined, dumbed down, and XCOM in name only."

Apparently most readers were happy just to vote it down and move on to more interesting comments.

The same situation appears to be true of an all-too-common troll at Ars Technica: the one wherein all users of a certain OS or smart phone are branded as idiots/poor people/dorks/etc. This particular specimen appears in the thread under the story, "Survey says: iPhone 5 owners not bothered by iOS 6 Maps—are you?" In fact, there was a bit of a contest to see which trolling posts might take top honors as most downvoted in the thread. Weighing in at -67 was this pointless gem:

"When people buy a phone because they have more money than sense, you can wonder why a broken feature doesn't bother them."

Not far behind at -65 was another similarly brilliant post:

"Wait, many Apple users don't about anything except making sure they have the latest version so their friends will be impressed? Put that up there with water being wet."

These are, of course, classic, substance-free trolling posts. Personal attacks are not permitted at Ars, and when personal attacks morph into wholesale attacks on huge groups of people, they are even less tolerable. Intelligent discussion does not arise from them, because there's nothing of intelligence in them in the first place. And nota bene to the readers who think there is intelligence in them: find another site to read. Better yet, find a time machine and go back to the mid-90s when it was at least fashionable to troll usenet with this kind of stuff.

Emerging Trends

As we keep an eye on the most downvoted posts on the site, a few trends are clearly emerging. Certain kinds of posts are absolutely going to get downvoted. Here's a typology of bad posting behaviors, with an explanation/theory behind each of their arguments. It's a work in progress.

Son of the "I don't even own a TV" guy: This is the poster who thinks other people will find it interesting that he cares nothing about their discussion or their interests, and in fact judges himself as somehow morally superior as a result. The morphology of this on Ars Technica includes people popping into threads about Windows 8 to proclaim how they will never use Windows, people popping into threads about iOS 6 to proclaim that they never have and never will buy an Apple product, and people popping into Android related threads and claiming that they will never purchase "crappy plastic phones." In these cases, the posters have failed to understand that no one really cares what their personal disposition is on something, if they have nothing to add to the discussion.

The "I only know how to speak in hyperbole" guy: This poster is not always trying to troll, but it often looks like it. This is the individual who cannot introduce nuance into their point of view, but instead must use superlatives and extreme language in what I can only assume is an attempt to get attention. They typically love phrases like "worst ever," "new low," "complete fail," "absolute best," "going downhill," and the like. The broad, sloppy brush is the favorite tool of this poster. Closely related to this poster is this fella:

The "anybody who X is/does Y" guy: It never ceases to amaze me how many posters are willing to take one small facet of someone's life or identity (say, their choice in OS), and extrapolate from that all manner of ethical and moral criticisms, or perhaps more commonly, someone's intelligence.

The "Ars Technica is the worst site ever but I'll be back again tomorrow" guy: There's a handful of readers who simply dive into our comments to chastise us about how horrible we are, but of course they come back day after day. A variation on this is the "I can't stand your Apple coverage" guy, who nonetheless reads all of the Apple coverage and comments on it. Ditto for science, ditto for gaming, and other areas of the site. We've definitely noticed that these sorts of posts are getting downvoted as well.

The "unpopular but sincere opinion" guy: This is the guy we are trying to figure out how to protect. In the absence of trolling, we would prefer to see differences of opinion respected, and I will say that for the most part, we have not seen heavy downvoting of people merely because of their opinions. In the few instances we've observed so far, unpopular opinions have been downvoted when they were accompanied by other off-putting factors, such as those listed above. But it is not uncommon to see a respectable but differing opinion sitting somewhere with -10 votes. On the one hand, that's not enough votes to put something in jeopardy of being collapsed, but on the other hand some readers are finding it demoralizing.

In all, we are pleasantly surprised by how well the system is working. It's not without its flaws, and we did note that this was an experiment from the outset. For the most part, we presently feel that collapsing a post is a suitable treatment for content that the community on the whole finds negative. Remember, to get to -20 votes, you have to have a net -20. Posts with 10 positive votes would thus require 30 negative votes, and so on. We are presently considering a few more tweaks to the collapse system, but we're not yet ready to discuss them. One thing is amazingly clear, however: readers are using the voting system in a very intense way. I believe we are close to seeing 20,000 votes a day, and that number has continued to grow each day we are publishing. Best of all, more votes are being cast up than down, which means the community is trying to lift what it likes best.

The "unpopular but sincere opinion" guy: This is the guy we are trying to figure out how to protect. [...] some readers are finding it demoralizing.

I haven't read all the comments (nor do I intend to try now that the comments are so numerous), but I think it is also important to remember the guy you are trying to protect may encompass the guy who also sometimes acts the ass in other comments.

Readers and active comment participants may be remembering the guy for his excessive display of unfriendly/incendiary comments elsewhere and find it easy to no-vote them; others might find it easy to down-vote them due to differing opinion.

In the end, I suspect the system is probably working even better than anticipated in many cases.

As far as the unpopular opinion position. Being Libertarian I fall into this category more often than I like. Have you suggested maybe putting a review button for collapsed posts?

Perhaps for posts that aren't trolling, but are victims of being unpopular?

This is the major one that needs to be watched out for. Since it has a tendency to turn comment sections into mouthpieces for group speak. Driving commentators with different opinions to simply not commenting or to different sites. Creating resentment for the main site all in the process.

As a comment lurker, I was really worried when this system was announced. I've been pleasantly surprised (so far) that voting hasn't turned homogenous. The DLC story is a good example. Upvaotes on the pro and against posts, and down voting can be seen on other pro and against comments, mostly those that are written in a shitty, angry way.

Keep the experiement running. But I think you'd have less of a problem if your moderators actually moderatored and banned the obvious trolls. Even the in the examples you give above, only two people got banned. As a lurker I could probably name 10 users off the top of my head that are resonsible for 50% of the shitty posting here. Why don't you do anything to these assholes?

The "types" of asshole readers is spot on. But you left one out, the "damned if you do/don't" crowd.

Now that the user favourite/hidden feature is there I would prefer to have the score hidden completely to discourage dogpiling or simply voting with the crowd.

I want to see the score. It tells me:-What others are thinking, and I have read some posts I might have skipped otherwise. I like it.-Makes me double check the really negative ones to see if a pile on is happening, and then I can either join in or vote up to try and save it.

for the "unpopular but sincere opinion" types showing the split between positive and negatives instead of showing just the net would help as you could see that some people agree with you even if most don't. That's less demoralizing than just seeing (-4) or something where it just looks like no one agrees with you and everyone doesn't like you.

This voting system seems useful, but I can't help but wonder whether some sort of meta-moderation might not be good. Maybe too complex to implement and might not work with the in-line nature of Ars.At least I would like a proper news place with good editorial content such as Ars with a robust comment system like /. has (but of course with proper news stories, proper writers...you know, the Ars content that we come here for).

On the whole I've found the Ars comments section to be good, except when it comes to the OS true believers ("zomg, crApple is teh worst", "omg no, M$ are the worst", "u ain't seen the fandroids yet!"). The other types of lousy commenters seem to be relatively few and far between.

I hope the "I don't even own a TV guy" applies to Internet Explorer here as well. I don't believe there is such a thing as an IE thread on the whole internet that doesn't have a group of people saying they don't use IE, etc. with nothing relevant to add to the topic of the particular thread, it's almost like an internet version of the Unicorn. You hear about it a lot, but never see it. Ars has the right attitude on the subject, but how many haters is Ars willing to piss off because they can't mindlessly spam any more?

For the sincere but unpopular opinion guy, maybe Ars moderators could, when they casually read a thread, mark a post as 'protected' if they suspect it's unpopular but don't find it trollish, so it can't be collapsed by the angry mob..

ARS is the only place where I see the readers regularly shit on ARS and its writers. What's up with that? "Guy who hates but come back" made me think of this.

It's really common here, and when combined with the prison rape jokes, the "writer sucks dicks" comments (saw one this am in Kyle's thread), the sexist shit posted here towards Casey and Jackie, it's like WTF?? And you see it by people who have been here for years, with hundreds of posts. What kind of dumbass hangs around a shit they fucking disrepect so much? Kiss your mother with that mouth? We at [H] have better manners than you. Fucking pathetic.

I used to be a community member here, big in the C&C forum, until the whiney bitches drove me off. ARS you like to think you have the best commenters but the fact is that you just have more eloquent assholes. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you have an asshat infestation.

I do worry about the system in general...but not as much at Ars, honestly. I became a subscriber because of the community as much as the site itself. There are more trolls as Ars gets to be a bigger and bigger name, but honestly, there are still enough intelligent people here that even without filtering, it's worth delving through to find intelligent commentary.

I agree with pancakesandbeyond that it would be nice to see the up/down votes separately, if possible. Because as much as the normal people will down-vote the trolls, the trolls can take up arms against reasonable people with differing opinions.

I think you have covered just about every form detrimental posting I have seen. I generally don't report something unless it crosses the line to the completely outrageous, but I have been just clicking "Add Foe" on posters guilty of most of these kinds of comments, especially if they are new. I have no interest in someones comments if their introduction is a Troll.

So when do we get to vote on Stories?

I have been critical of some Ars stories lately, though I haven't said it is the worse site ever. It is still among the best. But it seems to be posting more link-bait type headlines than in the past. Then surprise we have more new troll posters.

If we want to encourage reasoned discussion, then the onus is also on Ars to avoid the temptation of link-bait.

Ars would learn even more if it allowed users the option of upvoting or downvoting articles (and headlines). I think that some of the clickbaity headlines we've seen recently would receive more downvotes than all the comments combined.

It's like being the big gorrilla on Wall Street, any action you take may affect the market, in this case an article discussing voting strategies will influence future voting strategies and not necessarily in expected ways. You might have to start over on your analysis.

I've been watching this unfold, too, and trying to counter some of what I perceived as injustice. You can call it a success if you like, and you have, but that's rather delusional and cherry-pickish; for every success you highlight there were several more quiet failures.

It may not be as stark, but I see here the same rough pattern of moderating behavior as I've seen at other sites where such systems exist, and it's not a surprise: the majority of people don't moderate with objectivity because they can't... they're not wired that way and were never taught how to override that wiring (or even that they should try). The very reason they moderate is because of an emotional response, and as often as not that response is misplaced or disproportionate. If they haven't learned a mental discipline of introspection (or have damage in a very specific part of the brain), then all you'll get from them when you give them the power to judge others publicly is an emotionally reflexive jerk of the knee. I'm seeing it already. Certainly some of the most heavily disliked comments were themselves misplaced or disproportionate, but those instances obscure others that weren't but still got treated as such by less extreme numbers.

The bottom line is that any system of public moderation like the one created here results in a microcosmic example of tyranny of the majority. It may serve the goals of ARSTechnica the corporation, but it doesn't serve the best interests of all the readership. Some people who deserve better are going to get screwed by the majority.

The voting system coupled with the hide poster option has worked really well for me to weed out trolling and bitching in the comments section.

I enjoy reading the comments sections more now because I can filter out the noise to a greater degree. I also have to make sure I am not down voting on a whim or simply hiding opinion because it catches me on a bad day though.

Also note there is another type a person to add to your list. The person who starts a sentence with " you do realise ..........."

It's like Talladega Nights and starting a sentence " with all due respect, " which can in some cases lead to the poster being disrespectful and implying the OP was an idiot.

I'd be concerned about the hard value of -20 being unscaleable and exploitable. It would be better set as a ratio of positives to negatives or as a percentage of total votes.

This could potentially cause issues with small vote numbers though. A post at 0/1 up/downvotes is a good eaxmple of the potential issues with a ratio system.

It wouldn't be hard at all to implement a combination - must be at least -10 with 75% down votes, or something like that. That would solve (most of) the issues with abnormal vote numbers (either very small or very large).

Interesting analysis. I liked Ars better when it didn't have popularity contests.

Much too often a victim of down-voting would be the last category from the article, especially in highly controversial threads. I've seen purely factual statements made on topic get down-voted with no explanation whatsoever.

Why is there no mention of the comments receiving the highest number of upvotes?For example, this comment got more upvotes than the amount of downvotes many of the comments featured in this article received:

"The "owned by Apple" is a nice touch of link bait. Bet Ars gets 10x the hits for using the headline to imply some kind of conspiracy or negligence on Apple's part."

That comment got a +79. No wonder Ken doesn't want to talk about comments being upvoted.

It's like being the big gorrilla on Wall Street, any action you take may affect the market, in this case an article discussing voting strategies will influence future voting strategies and not necessarily in expected ways. You might have to start over on your analysis.

I think that influencing voting was the intent . . . much like the articles on getting to QED were aimed at increasing the effectiveness of people's arguments. They're trying to educate us on how to analyze and identify these posts, and thus vote more effectively. The fact that Ars does these types of things is one of my favorite things about the site.

I was initially fairly disappointed to see the voting buttons as it reminded me forcibly of Digg, where, at the height of its popularity, the voting systems were roundly abused. On the other hand, Ars leadership has earned a large amount of leeway it comes to improving the site, so I'm willing to continue hanging out in the comments and see what happens.

The voting system may have been most useful for calling out trolls and boiholes, and hiding their posts - for which you already have reporting mechanisms and moderation, though perhaps those functions could use some improvement. In most other use cases, the UP/DOWN voting is clearly being used as AGREE/DISAGREE voting, and I'm not sure how useful that really is with regards to the quality of the comments. (After all, you want lively and intelligent discourse, right? Allowing down-voting in the context of DISAGREE, actually discourages that.) Regardless, it's a mixed use model, a multipurpose voting system, and that's going to be difficult to use effectively - in my sincere (but possibly unpopular) opinion, that is.

So, perhaps you need to reconsider what value you should really expect from this system and what resources you're willing to apply to it in the long term. A more robust and accessible "report this post/spam hammer/OMG, ZOMBIES!" system might suffice, and allow you to stop worrying quite so much about protecting the "sincere but unpopular" guy.

Also, it's all but over by page 3. Have you checked stats for any given article's discussion thread voting activity as a function of comment placement, chronologically? Just curious.

I hadn't read the Ars comment sections in a while. Your new approach will hopefully improve them and even become a model for other sites to emulate. It may even encourage me to comment more often where the discussions are on point.

In fact, I like the new approach and the result so far enough that I'm going to purchase a membership, something I should have done long ago. Keep going, you're on the right track.

seems to me that one way to mitigate the problem of the "unpopular but sincere opinion" guy, might be to not concentrate on the delta between + and - votes. instead, if a post has significant negative reaction and no positive support, it would be a candidate for hiding. e.g. a post with 300 negative votes and 25 positive votes could remain visible, despite having a -275 delta. this would allow for a minority opinion to remain above water as long as it is held by more folks than just the poster. hopefully, this would reduce the inclination to equate dissent to trolling, when voting.

Ars would learn even more if it allowed users the option of upvoting or downvoting articles (and headlines). I think that some of the clickbaity headlines we've seen recently would receive more downvotes than all the comments combined.

Here's why we're not interested in this kind of voting at this time:1. Most important, I've never talked to an editor at another site who found this kind of feedback useful. 2. Users with accounts at Ars are only 4% of the audience, and not a statistically viable sample. Trends we see from the commenting community are vastly different from, say, Twitter, or email, or other feedback mechanisms.3. Traffic analysis (which is pageviews plus bounce-rates plus offsite links, and other trends) gives us much better insight into what people want to read.4. One person's factual headline is another person's link-bait. At the end of the day, we make the editorial calls on headlines, and readers sort of take it or leave it.

I'm not saying we've ruled it out entirely, but this community would have to be in much better shape before I'd consider it further.

Ken, thanks for the thoughtful and transparent analysis. This system has actually motivated me to use the standard comment system for stories instead of the OpenForum, so that I can see the results of the new system.

To me, by and large, it seems to work. Only the most egregious trolls get down-voted enough to be hidden.

At the same time, I do notice that some posts that are mere opinions can accumulate a few negative marks, and that pithy political jabs can garner a few up-votes. Not enough to hide or promote, but something to keep an eye on.

I know you guys will keep an monitor it and make adjustments if necessary. Just keep the best in class mix of content coming and I'll be here daily for another dozen years.

"unpopular but sincere opinion" guy naturally dies when you let the masses vote people down. The system is a popularity contest, and naturally the unpopular lose, regardless of whether they're logical, or even objectively right.

If you look at other sites with downvote-able comments, any comment or post going against the common group-think gets voted out of oblivion, no matter how sincere, polite or well referenced.

You could compare it to how political correctness works, being objectively correct and politically correct are two entirely different things, one is based on fact, logic and reason, the other is based on groupthink, political pressure and emotion, and the latter usually prevails.

When political correctness overpowers science or logical debate in general I can't help but be reminded of Galileo Galilei.

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.